Re: excel files

[Chris Humphries <chris@unixfu.net>]

Hello

stephane richard wrote:
> "Alexandre Devaure" <adevaure@free.fr> wrote in message 
> news:4161a1b5$0$22589$636a15ce@news.free.fr...
> 
>>Hello,
>>Does a library exist in Ada to read MS Excel files ?
>>I find nothing with google.
>>

How often do the excel files get changed where you will
need to process them? Could use a perl module to parse
the file and output the data into some delimited format.
Then you can use Ada to do it.

An example may be some web cgi to allow users to post
excel files, then the perl can parse it and store it
later to be processed by Ada.

Seems better to use Perl if able to do it to something
Ada can understand and work with, as excel files generally
do not change that much. If they do, then whoever is
using the excel for a database should just use a database :)

People's lives are not on the line, so using perl or
some other preparser for excel files doesn't seem all
that bad in my opinion. :)

Perl module options:
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Parse+Spreadsheet&mode=all

Good luck!


>>TIA
>>Alex
> 
> 
> I haven't found anything either.  I'd be curious to see if anyone else might 
> possibly have that answer.  What I did find is a VB Class (no flaming please 
> ;-)  that writes it in a binary/native format as in without using any office 
> references...Perhaps I could convert that to Ada.  As far as structures go I 
> think it's pretty straight forward.
> 
> Which brings me to my quest of the day.   What can I use in the Ada 
> hierarchy that will open a file in binary mode and not in sequential text 
> mode?  seems there's a difference at least in VB ..if there's such an open 
> mode in Ada then the translation from vb to Ada should be pretty 
> straightforward I think 
> 
>